The Oscars' MLB-esque Strategy of Improving Ratings (But Neglecting the Actual Fans)
Academy Awards and Major League Baseball each share a problem: their national ratings (although MLB’s regional ratings remain stellar) have been slipping for a while and those in power don’t quite know how to stop the bleeding. Their similarities don’t end there, as they have made half-hearted attempts to increase attention by ignoring the pleas of the hardcore fanbase and also come up with ideas that’s upsetting them.
What both institutions don’t realize is that in order to improve the product and make it more economically palpable the best option is to actually make it better for the fanbase that already exists first. MLB’s constant tweaking and refusal to fix the problems that already exist has resulted in Rob Manfred easily becoming the most disliked commissioner in all professional sports as he has all but admitted that he hates baseball and just likes the financial benefits of running a sports league.
The Oscars on the other hand has decided that instead of starting the telecast earlier, instead of improving the pacing of the presentation, instead of removing most of the fluff, they are now eliminating the broadcasting of multiple categories altogether, which has the cinephiles (rightfully) furious. Even dumber is the addition of Twitter categories, which as many have pointed out wouldn’t even be needed if the Academy would do a better job nominating the films and tightening the rules so that we don’t get movies with extremely limited theater runs and minimal accessibility getting the accolades. For example, Call Me By Your Name, a Best Picture nominee a few years ago, didn’t get a widespread theater run until its NINTH weekend just a few weeks before the actual ceremony itself.
We are in a generation of entertainment full of options and niches that as long as they remain loyal and connected to its fanbase, the source will make fantastic money. The Nintendo Switch despite being technologically inferior by multiple generations to the XBox X and PS5 remains the biggest name in gaming because they delivered a plethora of excellent unique games that caters directly to their longtime fans (Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Mario Odyssey ALL came out within 9 months of each other to collective sales of over 85 MILLION copies sold), which as a result expanded the fanbase to include newcomers. The Switch has outsold its previous console by over 100 million copies and is on pace to becoming the best-selling console in history---and this is without catering to most of the trends of modern gaming but instead maintaining focus on the core Nintendo fans. We even got that damn Metroid Fusion sequel…
The Academy Awards needs to double down on its niche of film, and needs to double down on appealing to the biggest fans of all, the cinephiles.
We are focusing on the Oscars, but I bring up MLB because if the Academy doesn’t see the problems that have emerged under the Manfred years they are going to fall into the same traps, shortcomings, and diminishing results. The Academy’s greedy focus on ratings and money is blinding them to the ideas that would actually work. The Academy is fixing problems that don’t exist while creating new obstacles that sprout up from all the unnecessary cutting. Worst of all, similar to baseball, they are wasting the new generation of talent with dated tactics (World Series always starting at 8:00 P.M. and having zero weekend afternoon games remains a devastating crime).
The Oscars broadcast doesn’t need fewer categories to show, they actually need -extra- categories so more movies have their opportunity to shine. Films that otherwise would have minimal shot at the main prizes could still walk away with gold if we had additional categories like Best Chorography (The Jackie Chan Award), Best Stuntwork (The Buster Keaton Award), Best Voiceover Performance (The Mel Blanc Award), Best Movie Soundtrack (The Fantasia Award), Best Opening Titles (The Saul Bass Award), etc.. We also have to bring back the Honorary Oscar, as its removal from the ceremony remains a crime. I’ll go a step -further-, maybe we can start honoring Best Foreign Language Films by continent, so that way we have awards for South America, Africa, Europe, etc.
The Oscars broadcast doesn’t need less time, it needs more time, but an earlier start as well---7:00 or even 6:30 like the Super Bowl. We need less of the celebrity admiration, we are celebrating films, not necessarily celebrating current stars having their moment to shine. We need more relevant montages and less of the attempts at comedy from the hosts or presenters. We don’t need shorter speeches; we need fewer commercials. You can easily scatter advertisements between categories without the 90-120 second ad breaks. Maybe taking it a step further can we potentially change locations of the Academy Awards once in a while to New York City, Miami, Las Vegas, and perhaps even Atlanta to change up the scenery?
We want more time to display the nominated performances and the nominated films. We want to see and listen to all the nominated songs and nominated scores. The Oscars today is reminding me of what happened to Total Request Live around the 2000-2002 mark, when it started spending less time playing the music videos and focused more on contests, celebrities, and fluff. Once they started minimizing the screentime of the music videos being voted on, its popularity started slipping. The Oscars appear focused on spending less actual time on the movies themselves, and it makes zero sense.
There’s no need to draw in more eyeballs if we have to water down the content to keep them invested. The Oscars should be a showcase of the best in filmmaking, domestically and abroad, it should become a beacon of recommendations. But scaling back on the content because of a bizarre insistence on finishing the ceremony by a certain time but wanting to keep the celebrity gossip train going is counterintuitive.
Somewhere within the Academy are people who do not want to see this new face of the Oscars, and it’s a matter of bringing them to power to replace those just worried about the bottom line. If you focus on the product, then you’d never have to actually focus on the financial repercussions. The solution isn’t to focus so much on the running time, it should be to focus more on celebrating film and filmmaking itself. That’s what we are here for, to see our movies winning and seeing the euphoria of the hardworking men and women as they get to walk to the stage and accept the gold they’ve dreamed about their entire lives. Don’t insult them by not even displaying their happiness for the world to see just because you want to end the ceremony before 11:00 P.M. It’s an insult and a disservice to everybody.
More film, less fluff, THAT is the solution to the Academy Awards ratings problem. We want a host that keeps the energy high but the show going, while having an evening that continues delivering winners, speeches, and happiness of lifelong desired goals being met before our eyes. Not whatever we are about to see.
Stop watering down the product if it means making it appealing to those who wouldn’t fully appreciate it in the first place. The Oscars should belong to the film lovers, the cinephiles, and those who want to eventually make their way to that stage holding the infamous gold.
Otherwise, you’re just becoming the Grammys.